Child Support Battle

Tina says she and her husband are battling the state over owed child support. Tina isn't sure where that debt falls in Baby Step 2. Dave tells Tina how she needs to handle this.

QUESTION: Tina in Arizona says she and her husband are battling the state over owed child support. Tina isn’t sure where that debt falls in Baby Step 2. The kids involved are grown with their own children. The balance is about $15,000. Dave tells Tina how she needs to handle this.

ANSWER: You have a judgment lien against you and you’ve lost the lawsuit. You have a $15,000 debt. Just put that in your debt snowball. Pay minimums on everything but your smallest debt and list your debts smallest to largest, then pay them off in that order.

When you get down to the child support, wherever it falls in the debt snowball, you just treat it like it is credit card debt and knock it out. It’s not going away until you pay it.

If he wants to go part time, you have to do a budget and see if he can do that and you guys can still get out of debt and retire with dignity. But at some point, this has to be cleared up. So I would treat this just like it was credit card debt. Pretend that an old credit card that you didn’t pay sued you and you have a $15,000 that you are paying $50 a month on. Just put it in the debt snowball right there; treat it exactly that way.

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